Practical examples of how you can use EUREAPA

A series of Q&A on how you can use the new EUREAPA tool.

1. At what levels of detail will EUREAPA be able to display results for various consumption impacts?

EUREAPA contains baseline data on the economy, greenhouse gas emissions, ecological footprints and water footprints for every EU member state and 16 other countries and regions of the world. At the heart of EUREAPA is an environmentally extended multi-region input-output model which combines tables from national economic accounts and trade statistics with data from environmental and footprint accounts.

The model uses The Global Trade, Assistance, and Production project 7 (GTAP7) as its data source. It has the most extensive regional coverage and is a well-recognized database that has been used extensively for trade analysis, agricultural economics and tariff issues, and recently also for carbon footprint analysis. The extensive data system models the flow of goods and services between 43 countries and regions covering the global economy for 130 individual sectors over a year. The sectors cover a range from agricultural and manufacturing industries to transport, recreational, health and financial services.
Supplemented with detailed carbon, ecological and water footprint data for hundreds of individual materials and products, EUREAPA can account for the full supply chain impacts associated with the food people eat, the clothes they buy, the products they consume or the way they travel.

This allows the user (e.g. national and EU policy-makers, and those who advise them) to look at the impacts of consumption activities in the context of lifestyles or national differences.

2. Will EUREAPA be able to focus on the differences and similarities between countries consumption impacts?

Yes, it could:

Rank the impact of a consumption category against all other categories e.g. how does clothing compare to all consumption categories?

Rank the impact of a consumption category from one EU member state’s against the performance of the other 27 member states e.g. how does the UK’s clothing footprint compare to the highest in the EU27?

Compare the impact of a consumption category against the highest it has been historically e.g. how does the UK’s current clothing footprint compare to the highest it has ever been?

3. Will EUREAPA be able to evaluate the different items in the EU Budget (and possibly new items) in terms of their footprint/impacts, so as to help construct an argument about what we do and don't want in the next 7-year EU Budget?

It will be possible to use EUREAPA to analyse the impact of the EU's budget on the footprint family. For example, EUREAPA could do two things: measure the global impact of the direct spend (eg on materials to build roads, infrastructure etc); and also the indirect impact from the change in consumer spending patterns that the budget would cause. Through the scenario function, the EUREAPA user would have to make certain assumptions about how the budget would change consumer spending. EUREAPA would then calculate the change in impact on the footprint family.

Yes, civil society organisations (CSOs) will be able to use the scenario function to create a scenario that shows how consumption and production efficiency would change if the EU Commission's roadmap on resource efficiency was implemented. The tool will calculate the associated change in footprint family as a result of the alternative consumption and production patterns.

5. Will EUREAPA include a risk analysis function?

The future scenarios and policy analysis will consider the impact on indicators other than the footprint family. This will allow us to understand the impact of proposed policies on socio-economic indicators and, to some extent, the risk to social development and the economy. It will not be able to consider the risk of policy being unsuccessful, although testing the robustness of policy in a number of future scenarios will support risk analysis to some extent.

The EUREAPA tool is being developed to look primarily at the impacts of consumption. Businesses and the products they sell can affect how citizens consume. Therefore, the tool can be used to explore the extent to which businesses can support more sustainable consumption. For example, developing video conferencing technology will reduce the need to travel to meetings. Therefore, a company could measure the impact of developing these technologies on a nation’s consumption footprint. EUREAPA can also show the impact of producing goods more efficiently.

7. How will EUREAPA be accessible?

EUREAPA will be available for free either online or for download to use locally. Users can be prompted via email periodically to ensure that their local copy includes the latest data and scenarios.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement N° 227065. The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of the One Planet Economy Network and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.